Legendary Plans Godzilla Trilogy Culminating in King Kong vs Godzilla

Studio is Becoming Giant Monster Land in U.S.

It’s happening. They’re going to fight, and it’s going to be epic. Over at Hollywood Reporter, they’ve posted a full-on article examining the deal that came together between Legendary and Warner Bros. Universal passed on Legendary’s most recent iteration of the new King Kong, which is in the works from director Jordan Vogt-Roberts titled Kong: Skull Island. Apparently they didn’t agree to the budget, so instead WB said sure, no problem – because they have big plans. They want to make a new trilogy leading to King Kong vs Godzilla. We all know that Batman v Superman is going to be huge next year, why not these monsters? That’s why this is such an interesting deal, and it sets everything up to work out nicely across three movies.

The report confirms that the plan is: Vogt-Roberts’ Kong: Skull Island first, which is tentatively scheduled for March 2017. Then the Godzilla sequel, with WB behind that, and likely Gareth Edwards returning after Rogue One. Then, finally, likely a third movie that will see King Kong and Godzilla meet and fight it out, or potentially team up, or more likely both. And for those worried about size problems, here’s the quip in THR:

A threshold problem is that Kong supposedly is much smaller than Godzilla. That fact was not lost on Universal. “There were funny comments about him having to be the size of the Empire State Building instead of hanging off of it,” says a studio insider. But a source close to Tull says Legendary is confident it can come up with a rationale to explain how Kong and Godzilla can do battle — and possibly become allies.

You can read all of the details about how it happened on THR. They talk about some disappointment with Legendary working with Universal, but it’s all politics because Legendary has a great slate this year to show for it – Jurassic World & Straight Outta Compton, plus Krampus, Crimson Peak & Steve Jobs coming up. It’s also mentioned that the Pacific Rim sequel is on hold “indefinitely” at the moment, meaning Legendary is focusing entirely on Godzilla and King Kong as their money-maker big screen monsters over the course of the next 5 to 10 years. We’ll keep an eye on development for Kong: Skull Island, which is the one I’m most intrigued by. It’s going to be important to re-establish the King Kong character in an endearing way to make this epic fight be worth the PPV price. For now, I’m excited to watch how these two heavyweights shape up.